The Legend Of Heroes: Trails Through Daybreak II PS5 Review. It’s hard to keep a long-running franchise like the Trail titles feeling new and refreshed, but Daybreak II does just enough to change the formula around and add much-needed quality-of-life improvements and updated mechanics to what was already a solid update for the franchise with the original Daybreak.
NIS has once again come out swinging, proving that the Legend of Heroes franchise is just as relevant as the best RPG franchises in the business.
The Legend Of Heroes: Trails Through Daybreak II PS5 Review
A Strong Story With Plenty Of Narrative Drama
Trails Through Daybreak II follows the events of the first game, which saw the destruction of the Almata gang syndicate. Along with his companions, Van is hot on the trail of a serial killer, which resembles his own Grendal armored transformation.
Along the hunt for this killer, Van and company must try to find the power vacuum created by the fall of Almata and various other groups looking to take the place of the mighty syndicate. This time, the story takes some cues from Trails Into Reverie but does it much better and more entertainingly. While you play through chapters, you’ll get to select different groups of characters and see events play out from various perspectives and in multiple locations.
You can choose which one you would like to play through first, but eventually, you must play through all of them to finish the chapter. Another interesting addition to the story is the “Dead End.” As you play, you’ll encounter Dead End moments. These moments come when, in the story, the party is killed or fails their objective.
Better And More Impactful Side Quests
But it doesn’t lead to the end of the game; Agnes’s Genesis kicks in and rewinds time to a pivotal moment in the story that sets the party on their path to doom. The party remembers the events like deja vu and makes different decisions to avoid the same outcome.
Another significant change is the quality of the side quests. There are fewer of them this time, but they are much better written, and some have great rewards and help increase your LGC Alignment system introduced in the first game. Each decision will net you points in Law, Gray, and Chaos alignments.
The LGC Alignment system doesn’t affect the story much, but it does impact the game. Depending on your alignment, some hidden bosses will appear, and various achievements and trophies will be tied to your alignment.
It’s not a mechanic you have any real control over, and your decisions for most of the game won’t lead to different outcomes until the final chapters. However, it’s still a superb mechanic that adds to the mystery of the Genesis tool and the game’s overall story.
Excellent Combat With Some Nice Improvements
The gameplay hasn’t changed from the last game. Daybreak II features two combat modes: traditional turn-based and action. In action combat, you can attack enemies on the field, dwindling their health. You can use a charged attack to stun the enemies and then pound away until they are defeated.
One addition to the action combat is when you perform a perfect dodge, an icon appears, letting you call in a teammate to pull off a power-skill attack. Once this is done, you will switch control to the party member that did the attack.
You can, of course, go right into the turn-based combat with the press of a button. Once in turn-based combat, you can attack normally, use crafts, or Orbral magic attacks. If you stand next to a party member, they can give you a nice bonus for your attack.
One addition is the ability to do a tag team attack if you enter turn-based combat while an enemy is stunned. If you stun an enemy before entering turn-based combat, you can use a shard boost, which enhances your attacks, but it also allows you to use a special tag team attack if you use a craft on the stunned enemy.
The Orbral system hasn’t gotten any upgrades, but that’s not a bad thing, as it was one of the better versions of the system in the franchise. You still get quarts with various magic abilities like Fire, Wind, and Earth attacks. You can socket them into your Orbral devices.
Taking Inspiration From Its Past
A significant addition to Daybreak II is the inclusion of the Marchen Garden. Just like a game mode in Trails Into Reverie, the Marchen Garden is a virtual game world that Van is tasked with exploring to find out who hacked it and what has changed in this virtual world from the hack. Though it’s an option location to explore, it’s one that you shouldn’t ignore.
The Garden has its gotcha system placed into. As you explore the Garden, you gain shards that you can then spend on a cube shatter that nets your accessories, parts of outfits, and various other cosmetic items. When you acquire all the parts of said outfit, you can obtain it and change the look of your party members.
That’s not the only thing worth doing in the Garden. It’s a great way to keep your party levelled up and ready for the next time they appear. Once a party member joins your team, even if they aren’t present in the story, you can take them through the Garden and keep them levelled up as needed.
The most important aspect of the Garden is the Skill stones you can acquire to level up all the crafts your party members have. Each character has their skill stones, and they are random drops in the garden fields and through the Cube gotcha system.
Pleasing On The Eyes And The Ears
Visually, the game looks just as solid as its predecessor, with a few additions to the lighting system. The character models are still great, and the animation work is stellar. The soundtrack is a huge improvement on the previous entry however with its multitude of tracks, though some of the same songs are used for areas you explored in the first game.
Meanwhile, voice work is overall excellent again, with everyone returning to reprise their roles. Still, just like the first outing, the voice acting is sporadic, with voiced lines coming in randomly for a few sentences during a long-winded conversation. After twelve years, I hoped the developers would have moved away from this baffling decision of sporadic voice work.
After twelve years of storytelling, the Trails saga is finally reaching its endgame. Western audiences are one game away from catching up with the Japanese releases. Trails Through Daybreak II is an exceptional RPG that can easily compete with the biggest in the industry. The excellent cast of characters and improvements in quality of life throughout the entire experience provide fans and newcomers with plenty to enjoy.
The Legend of Heroes: Trails Through Daybreak II releases on February 14, 2025, on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch, and PC.
Review code kindly provided by PR